Steve Ballmer on Microsoft software 'gotchas'

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has admitted the company could do more to simplify its software licensing.

Speaking in London yesterday, Ballmer said the software giant's licence terms could be made clearer: "I'm sure we have fine print we don't need - I'm not trying to say we are saints."

Ballmer was speaking at a Windows 7 event in London yesterday, where a customer questioned the CEO on his views about making software licences simpler - eliciting a round of applause.

The Microsoft chief added there are some elements of licence agreements where the company's software auditors should use their discretion, saying: "There may be fine print that sometimes is a gotcha that's deliberate and sometimes it's a gotcha that our people are finding and shouldn't be out hassling about."

However, according to Ballmer, there are no plans to change anything at the moment.

"I don't anticipate a big round of simplifying our licences," he told delegates.

Previous rounds of simplification have lead to falling customer satisfaction, he claimed.

"I am trying to say that if we're going to do any kind of simplification we need to be driven by things customers want us to as opposed to driven by the purity of the art of simplification because last time we did that I'd say we succeeded on simplification and our customer satisfaction numbers plummeted for two and a half years, so [we] don't want to do that again."

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer speaking at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in July this year
(Photo credit: Microsoft)

According to the Microsoft head honcho, Microsoft's myriad licensing options are necessary to help cut customers' costs and if licensing options were to be removed, some organisations would end up paying more for their software.

"The simplifying thing would be to eliminate one [option]… but the customer always finds the approach in which they pay us less money," he said.

"It turns out every time you simplify something you get rid of something and usually what we get rid of, somebody has used to keep their prices down," Ballmer added.

It's not just customers' bottom line that could be affected by simplification - Microsoft shareholders will be watching for any changes too.

"We would all like the goal to be simplification but I think the goal is simplification without price increase. And our shareholders would also like it to be simplification without a big price decrease," Ballmer noted.